The Naples ring road became the first road infrastructure in Italy to receive an official “Smart Road” certificate from the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. This step marks the beginning of Italy’s revolution in smart mobility, turning one of the key urban thoroughfares in the south of the country into a national model of technological innovation. The project is the result of a collaboration between Tangenziale di Napoli, the Autostrade per l’Italia group, the line ministry, the National Center for Sustainable Mobility and the Movyon technology hub.
Hi-tech grid
The main objective of this initiative was to create an infrastructure capable of collecting, processing and sharing information in real time to improve the safety, efficiency and sustainability of traffic. In order to achieve this status, the road had to meet three key legal requirements: intelligent traffic monitoring, continuous monitoring of weather conditions and hydrogeological risks, and the establishment of two-way communication between infrastructure and vehicles.
A dense technological network has been installed along the 22-kilometer ring road, which enables proactive traffic management. The infrastructure includes 217 smart cameras, 15 traffic detection portals, eight meteorological stations and 40 communication antennas equipped with ITS-G5 and Cellular V2X technology. All collected data is fed into the Movyon C-ITS central platform, which integrates information from different sources and thus enables continuous monitoring of the vehicle’s speed, position and direction.
The system is designed to use advanced traffic models to assist control center operators in making timely decisions, thereby resolving congestion before it escalates into an emergency. At the same time, meteorological stations and sensors monitor the amount of precipitation, road condition and water level, promptly alerting professional services in case of danger of floods or landslides.
Communication with vehicles
The biggest step forward is the so-called Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) technology, which enables two-way communication between the road and the car. Connected vehicles receive notifications about traffic accidents, works, obstacles, weather conditions and recommended speed directly to the panel, while at the same time sending data back to the system. Currently, 30 connected vehicles are operating on this section for testing purposes, actively communicating with the network and receiving instructions to reduce the formation of queues.
On the section between Vomero and Fuorigrotta, the first Italian test of an autonomous vehicle that adjusted its speed in real time to instructions received directly from the road was successfully carried out. Chief Executive Officer of the Autostrade per l’Italia Group, Arrigo Gianapointed out that this technological evolution guarantees a higher level of security for the infrastructure and its users and confirms the group’s role as a leader in the mobility of the future.